Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  For an instant Lindsay was too unnerved by both Catlin's speed and the hard warmth of the back of his hand moving over her hip to answer. She said the first thing that came to her mind. "Actually, it's more like hunting snipe. Come in."

  Catlin caught her eyes and smiled suddenly. "Snipe?" he asked, glancing again at the catalog as he walked into the living room.

  "Right," she said, closing the door and automatically throwing the dead bolt. "Lots of false trails, giggles from the tall grass – and no snipe."

  Catlin's laughter was as warm and unexpected as the touch of his hand had been. After a moment Lindsay laughed with him.

  "What kind of snipe did you have in mind?" he asked.

  "How about a perfectly preserved bronze charioteer inlaid in gold and silver, half life-size, taken from Emperor Qin's very own tomb?" Lindsay asked whimsically, putting her own private fantasy into words.

  Though Catlin still smiled, a subtle change came over him. "That," he said distinctly, "would be one hell of a snipe."

  She looked at him suddenly, reminded of the moment in the basement when he had looked like a man anticipating danger. The rational part of her mind said that she should be afraid of this man. The irrational part of her – the part that she depended on for her visceral judgments of bronzes – told her that she was safer with Catlin than she had ever been in her life with anyone. As soon as that realization came to her, she relaxed, accepted Catlin without further questioning, just as she accepted her gift for discerning genuine from fraud among ancient Chinese bronzes.

  "Yes, a charioteer would be a hell of a snipe," she agreed. Her smile turned down slightly at one corner. "But don't hold your breath, Catlin. The Chinese discovered the Emperor Qin's bronzes in 1980 – and then they covered them right back up!" She shook her head slowly. "Ever since I heard the first rumor, I've dreamed of seeing just one of Qin's bronze charioteers. Just one."

  Catlin heard the longing in Lindsay's voice, saw it in the indigo depths of her eyes and in the soft curve of her mouth. "Have you?" he asked quietly.

  "No. I've been to Xi'an three times. Each time I've wangled the VIP tour of Mount Li and the digs."

  "And?"

  "Terra cotta," she said. Then she heard her own words and laughed very softly. "Don't misunderstand me. To stand among Emperor Qin's resurrected army, to see rank upon file of soldiers erect in the trenches, faces as individual as yours or mine, men rising from the earth and marching down through time " Her voice died, then resumed quietly. "To see that is to see a great people's soul given form and substance and texture. It's beautiful. It's terrifying." She hesitated, trying to explain the eerie magnificence that was Xi'an. "It is art," she said simply.

  "And this?" asked Catlin, raising the fat catalog.

  "Commerce," she said. "And maybe, just possibly, some true art."

  "The auction house would be offended."

  "I doubt it. They're better than most at finding quality artifacts and weeding out frauds, and they know it."

  "But no Qin dynasty bronzes?" asked Catlin casually, riffling through the pages with a blunt thumb.

  "No."

  "How about rumors of Emperor Qin's bronzes?"

  Lindsay shrugged. "Occasionally."

  "Lately?"

  She looked up from the pages flying by beneath Catlin's thumb and found him watching her. She felt as though she had stepped into a searchlight. His eyes were clear, intent and missed nothing.

  "No more than usual – why?" she asked.

  "What's usual?" countered Catlin.

  "Ever since the first of the emperor's mortuary bronzes were found, every Tom, Dick and Hop Sing has one for sale," Lindsay said dryly.

  "Bought any?" asked Catlin, idly fanning through the catalog again.

  "No, but I've appraised a few for clients who had bought them elsewhere."

  "And?"

  "The worst of the bronzes had hardly cooled from the casting process."

  "What about the rest?"

  "One Sung forgery. Several genuine Han bronzes. One bronze from the Warring States period."

  Catlin closed the catalog with a snap. The small sound startled Lindsay, who had been watching Catlin as intently as he had been watching her.

  "Fascinating. I collect rumors as well as bronzes," said Catlin. "They, too, tell about the soul of man." He smiled. "Why don't we swap rumors over squid with ginger, Sichuan rabbit and shrimp with garlic?"

  "Throw in pot stickers and you've got a deal," Lindsay said, suddenly realizing just how hungry she was.

  "You're on."

  Mentally Lindsay crossed her fingers, knowing that for every excellent Washington restaurant, there were three that were at best adequate. When the taxi deposited Catlin and Lindsay in front of the steps leading down into the Sichuan Garden, she mentally crossed another set of fingers. She had heard of the restaurant, but had never eaten there.

  "Relax," said Catlin, smiling. "This place is owned, run and staffed by the People's Republic of China. You won't find a menu like this anywhere outside China and probably not inside, either. The Sichuan Garden is the PRC's showplace of Chinese cuisine."

  The first thing Lindsay noticed as the door closed behind her was that in the restaurant's low light, Catlin's eyes became the clear, luminous brown of fine cognac. Then she noticed the enormous vases and intricately painted temple dragons that were on display. A Tang horse pranced in place, as vibrant today as it had been a thousand years ago.

  "Some of the artifacts are genuine antiques," said Catlin, as he seated her. "Others are antique or modern copies. All of them are beautifully crafted."

  "It's rare to find such valuable things on open display," Lindsay said. "I know a museum that would kill for the vase by the entrance."

  "Displaying the art without barriers or guards is a subtle and very powerful display of face," said Catlin, picking up his chopsticks.

  Lindsay glanced at him with increasing interest, realizing that he was right – and that he must know a great deal about the nuances of Chinese culture. When the meal was served, she realized that he must be as familiar with the everyday aspect of Chinese life as he was with the cultural. He used chopsticks as easily as she did.

  "Were you born in China?" asked Lindsay, looking up from her plate, a tidbit of rabbit poised in her chopsticks.

  "No. Why?"

  "You use chopsticks like a native."

  Catlin looked down at the chopsticks as though just realizing that he wasn't using a knife and a fork. He looked back at her. "So do you."

  "I was born in Shaanxi province."

  "Really?" Catlin asked, his voice encouraging. He wanted her to talk about herself rather than ask questions about his own past. Her file had shown up at his apartment, along with Yi's file, but there had only been time enough to skim the pages before he had to pick Lindsay up for dinner. Besides, he would find out a great deal about her inherent truthfulness if he could compare what she said with the information in her file. "I thought Americans were thrown out of China by then." He smiled suddenly, looking at her with open male appreciation. She was wearing a tourmaline green sheath that owed far more to Paris than to the Orient. "And don't try telling me you were born before 1949.1 wouldn't believe it."

  "You're right. I wasn't," said Lindsay. She paused to savor a bite of her very spicy shrimp dish before she continued. "Dad was Canadian. Mom was American, but they kept that a secret as long as they could. When I was eighteen I had to declare citizenship in one country or the other. I was living in San Francisco by that time, so I chose to become American."

  "Was your father in the import-export business?"

  "My parents were missionaries."

  Catlin's black eyebrow arched. "Tough job under any circumstances," he said. "In the early stages of the People's Republic it must have been hell."

  Lindsay's chopsticks hesitated for an instant over the shrimp as memories sleeted through her, screams and shots, blood tu
rning black in the moonlight. And something worse. Something she remembered only in nightmares, forgetting again the instant she awoke. "Yes," she said huskily, "sometimes it was just that. Hell."

  "You must have been glad to leave," Catlin said, seeing again the shadow of fear tighten Lindsay's face, hearing fear in the thinning of her voice.

  Again, Lindsay hesitated. "It was home, and childhood, and now all I have left are memories. Some of them are very good. Oil lamps and candle flames, so graceful, so warm. The scent of ginger and garlic sizzling in hot oil on a frosty night. The women in the kitchen laughing and talking and chopping vegetables with miraculous skill. The pungent smell of cigarettes and the click-click of stones as the men played mah-jongg."

  Lindsay looked beyond Catlin, seeing not the gleaming restaurant but the seething past. "We all lived together, our houses leaning against one another. The church was little more than a handmade altar hung with scarlet, the Chinese color of joy and good wishes. We sang hymns in half scales." She smiled. "I didn't realize what 'Onward Christian Soldiers' really sounded like until I got to San Francisco. Do you know," she said, focusing on Catlin instead of the past, "that hymns sung by Americans using the European scale sounded alien to me?"

  Catlin nodded, understanding exactly what Lindsay meant. When he finally had returned to America, it had been years since he had used English to do anything but break coded communiques. His native language had sounded foreign to him.

  Suddenly Lindsay realized that she had been monopolizing the conversation. That was unlike her. She had learned that few people could relate to the experiences she had had as a child, much less understand them. Usually it was she who listened, other people who talked, and her memories slept. Catlin was different. He was a good listener. His quiet questions, his genuine interest in her answers, and the feeling of safety she had with him peeled the years away, leaving only memories silently welling up like blood from an open wound.

  "How did you learn to use chopsticks?" asked Lindsay.

  "Hunger is the best teacher," Catlin said wryly. "Sticky rice helps. In no time you're eating like a native." He glanced around the restaurant. "Well, almost. True natives hold the bowl under their chin and shovel as fast as they talk. If we did that, the Anglos around here would think we were barbarians."

  "They certainly would," agreed Lindsay, laughing. "A polite Western child says grace and bends at the waist to bring the mouth closer to the food. A polite Oriental child says grace, brings bowl to mouth and lets the devil take the hindmost."

  Catlin's smile flashed. "Did your parents have a large congregation?"

  "Hardly. Christianity wasn't very popular at the time. You know how it is – when things go wrong in China, foreign devils are blamed." She glanced at her plate heaped with food and the full rice bowl beside it, remembering all the times she had gone hungry. "Lots went wrong in China after the turn of the century. The half-century mark was no treat, either."

  "I'm surprised your parents stayed, particularly with children."

  "Child," she corrected. "I was the only one. That caused great despair to the congregation," she added, smiling. "Large families in general and sons in particular are a source of great face in rural China. To follow a man who had only one child – and that one a girl – required courage of a sort that most Americans just don't understand."

  "Similar to the kind of courage it took to accept the teachings of a man who had only one name and no children at all: Jesus."

  Lindsay's eyes widened in surprise. She had met no one outside China who understood the Chinese people's immense need to place themselves in history through their ancestors and their own offspring. A man with no family name and no children had no face. To emulate such a man was not only ridiculous, it was offensive to one's own ancestors.

  "The fact that Christ was a bachelor living away from home didn't help the Christian cause in China," Lindsay agreed wryly. "The Chinese men who were responsive to religion often chose Islam. They could more easily admire a man who had a wife, concubines and many sons."

  "How long were you in China?" Catlin asked as he deftly lifted a shrimp to his mouth. The texture and flavor were both superb. With a silent, ironic laugh, he realized that the Chinese food he was eating tonight in Washington was far better than most of the food he had eaten during all his years in Asia.

  "My parents were forced to close their mission when I was seven," said Lindsay. Her voice changed, thin again, remembering fear.

  "Out with the foreign devils?" guessed Catlin.

  She nodded, but said nothing, not wanting to pursue the subject. Since her mother's death, the recurring nightmare of China was too close, too frightening. Lindsay wanted to remember as little as possible about that time of violence and fear. She was alive, safe, a woman in America rather than a child in Shaanxi province, China.

  "We went to Hong Kong," Lindsay said quickly. "Dad divided his time between there and Taipei while mother ran a small mission among the poor. Later I was sent to live with my father's sister in San Francisco."

  "How old were you?"

  "Twelve."

  "It must have been difficult to leave your parents and the only world you had ever known."

  "Yes," said Lindsay. She searched her rice bowl as though she expected to find a diamond hidden among the glistening white grains. "It wasn't the first time, though. Hong Kong was also a foreign land to me. The climate was different. The people looked different. Cantonese rather than Mandarin was the common dialect."

  "Did you learn to speak Cantonese?"

  Lindsay shrugged. "A little. Dad's congregation was mostly displaced northerners, both in Hong Kong and Taipei, so I had little use for Cantonese. The school I went to was English."

  Catlin hesitated, wondering bow to ask the next question without revealing what he already knew. "I guess your parents wanted you to get a better education than was available in Hong Kong," he murmured, "so they sent you to America."

  "My father died. My mother stayed with the congregation in Hong Kong. I went to San Francisco."

  The words didn't tell Catlin as much as the tension of Lindsay's fingers holding the chopsticks; she would talk no more on the subject of Hong Kong and her father's death and her relocation in America. Despite the fact that she, hadn't told Catlin as much as he had seen in her file, he didn't think that Lindsay was being dishonest. He, too, had a deep reluctance to talk about aspects of the past that had nothing to do with government secrets. Some parts of the past were simply too painful to remember.

  "How did you end up in China?" asked Lindsay abruptly, her tone determined. She was through talking about herself and the past. She had done far too much of it tonight. Dreaming about the past was bad enough. Talking about it was impossible.

  "Airplane," Catlin said laconically, not bothering to correct her assumption that China rather than another part of Asia had been his destination. "You were right about the Chenin Blanc," he continued, pouring more of the wine into her glass. "It's quite good with the rabbit. I'll have to remember that. It's hell finding Western wines to go with Oriental foods. The dry whites can't compete with Sichuan seasonings, the reds overwhelm the subtle flavors of the nonspicy dishes, and the Rieslings are sometimes just too sweet for anything but fortune cookies."

  Lindsay laughed.

  "Have you tried one of the Merlots coming out of California?" he asked, smiling in return. "Lighter than Cabernet, more interesting than Beaujolais." He signaled a waiter. "Let's experiment."

  Lindsay was so grateful to have the conversation shifted away from her past that she didn't notice Catlin had avoided answering any personal questions about his own past. Eagerly she entered into a discussion of the possibilities of various wines when drunk with various international cuisines. By the time the discussion shifted to Chinese bronzes, Lindsay was relaxed again, enjoying the company of the man with amber eyes and a very quick mind.

  "White told me that you had never made a mistake w
hen it came to sniffing out fraudulent bronzes," Catlin said, not specifying which of the three White males had praised Lindsay.

  "He exaggerates," she said, smiling. "I've made mistakes. Without the help of a highly sophisticated laboratory, it's very hard to spot a modern copy of an ancient bronze. Bronze art isn't like painting. If the craftsman is exquisitely precise – literally an artist at his work – a bronze copy can have almost the same vitality as the original."

  "But it won't be exactly the same?"

  Lindsay hesitated. "I've never seen a copy that had the same sheer presence as an original. Or if I did," she added honestly, "I didn't recognize it as a copy. Fortunately, most forgers have neither the patience, the tools, the knowledge nor the talent to do a really top-notch job of copying. Also, when outright fraud is the object, the tendency is to copy the larger, more expensive pieces. Those are also the most famous bronzes. Any knowledgeable collector being offered a bargain bronze will check it very carefully against existing catalogs, or pay someone like me to vet the purchase for him."

  "And the unknowledgeable collectors?" asked Catlin.

  "Have no business buying any kind of art." Lindsay hesitated and frowned slightly. "That's harsh, but it's true. The idea that great art can be found at bargain prices is just plain naive, and any art dealer who tells you otherwise doesn't have your best interests at heart. If the piece he's pushing were such a fantastic bargain, the dealer would buy it himself and resell at a profit. After all, that's the way legitimate dealers make a living. And the dealer who protests that he'd buy the piece himself, but his inventory is full or you're such a swell friend that he wants to let you in on a good thing well, when you hear those words, grab your wallet and ran like hell. The dealer has seen you coming, and you have sucker written all over you."

  In the silence Lindsay heard her own words echo. She smiled in self-mockery. "You pushed the wrong button, I'm afraid. I have very little patience with art scams or the people who

  make them possible. And that includes greedy buyers as well as greedy sellers."

  "You can't con an honest man?" suggested Catlin, smiling.